A&E

My dad was admitted to A&E on Sunday 18th December 2022, he was in a lot of of pain at home and an ambulance was 6 hours away. Luckily I was able to take him to A&E myself. They were inundated but saw him within 1/2 hr, I think that night they had 100 admits and then the next day declared a critical incident. It took a long time for him to get pain relief which then was given orally even after he had an iv cannula and had been told he couldn't have anything orally due to vomiting. He was on a trolley bed on a side ward with no pillow for a good couple of hours, then someone found a stash of pillows and he looked moderately more comfortable. He had a chest x-ray at some point during the night (I left at 2.30am) but he didn't receive an abdominal palpation or even ultrasound despite having been admitted with severe abdominal cramps. He is a stoic man and was in a lot of pain. The next morning he was discharged at 8.00am and I collected him at 8.30am. There was no-one to talk to about ongoing care and he received no advice about pain relief and he received no medication or prescription for his severe nausea.

The next day he was still being sick and had no appetite, he was pale and still quite uncomfortable. I phoned his GP and she tagged him on to the end of her evening surgery, gave him a thorough physical exam, upped his gastric protectant meds and prescribed anti-nausea meds. She also referred him for an abdominal ultrasound which he has later this month.

I had also phoned 111 on the Monday evening (same day he was discharged) at around 6pm, and got a call back at 11.30pm to say they hadn't forgotten us and that the duty doctor would call. The call from the duty doctor didn't come until 24 hours later, around 8.45pm on the Tuesday, along with profuse apologies, but by then we'd fortunately been able to see his own GP.